My Family is Right Here
by Once Upon a Femmeslash
Summary: AU: Regina shows up at Emma's door one year after the new curse, not Hook. Spoilers for the latest episode. Prompted by bored-outof-my-mind
1. Chapter 1

Regina knocked on the apartment door and stepped back nervously, bouncing on her heels. When the door didn't open immediately, she knocked again impatiently. It suddenly occurred to her that Emma might not be home, or that she might have the wrong apartment. She hadn't come all this way only to be dissuaded by an apartment number.

When the door finally swung open Regina couldn't hold back a relieved smile. It was Emma, at long last. Regina was glad to see that she looked happy, healthy.

"Emma." The name was as much an exhalation as a statement, letting go of a breath she'd been holding since that moment at the town line one long year ago.

"Uh, yes?" Confusion was evident on Emma's face, but Regina could tell that Emma was less guarded when her memories of the last twelve years were of Henry and not of bail-skippers and dragons. She knew from experience the healing effect the love of a son could have.

"May I come in?" Regina tried to ignore her embarrassment at showing up early enough in the morning that Emma was still in pajamas, but this was kind of important.

"Do I know you?"

Regina saw confusion morph into irritation in Emma's expression, so she decided to skip to the point.

"Listen, something terrible has happened and we need your help. Your family is in trouble."

Emma gestured behind her. "My family is right here."

Regina's eyes softened. "Henry's here?"

Emma tried to stop her as she pushed her way into the apartment, but now that Regina had confirmation that her son was really here, feet away, nothing would stop her from seeing him.

Henry turned around, mouth full of pancake, as he heard footsteps in the hall. "Mom, who was at the door?"

Regina's eyes shone with happy tears as she grinned at her son. "Henry. You're okay, you're safe. Are you happy?"

"Mom, who is this?" Henry stood up, looking between Emma and Regina.

"No idea, she just… Do you know her? She seems familiar, like someone I've seen before, but I can't place her."

Excitement swelled in Regina, with a fair helping of hope. If Emma recognized her, convincing her of who she was may not be as much of a problem as she thought.

"We've met, but you probably don't remember. Do you remember a town called Storybrooke?"

"You know, I think I had a dream once where I crashed my car into a sign that said 'Welcome to Storybrooke'. I have these dreams sometimes, really weird ones, after we watch Disney movies too close to bedtime. It's strange…" Emma paused. "Wait, why am I telling you this? How did you know about Storybrooke? I couldn't find it on any map. Who are you?"

"An old friend, sort of. My name is Regina," she smiled ruefully. "though you've really been the only one who saw me as such. I am, well was, the mayor of Storybrooke."

"But it doesn't exist," Henry piped up. "She googles it like once a week."

"It does! Well, it did. But you two do know me, and I know you!" Regina pointed to Henry's mug. "that will be hot chocolate with cinnamon. And you're going to eat your pancake first, without syrup, and then put the syrup on the eggs. And you're mildly lactose intolerant but you always seem to eat dairy anyway, and when you sneeze you always sneeze three times, and when you have a cold or the flu or something you always crave chocolate pudding."

"How do you know that? Have you been watching us?" Emma looked somewhat startled and moved to stand between Regina and Henry.

"I know you too. You're incredibly stubborn. You like bearclaws and have a ridiculously high metabolism. You have a penchant for silly hats and you have a favorite red leather jacket."

Regina stepped closer to Emma and her voice level dropped. "You were found on the side of a road in Maine as an infant, in a blanket that said 'Emma'. You bounced around the foster system until you left, and then you bounced around the country. You were a petty thief, as was Henry's father. You two travelled around in that beat-up Bug of yours until you were arrested. You gave birth to Henry in jail."

Emma stepped closer to Regina, now more than a little pissed off. "How the hell do you know all that?"

"Henry said you have a superpower. You can tell when people are lying. Just hear me out and see if I'm lying." Regina searched Emma's expression, somewhat panicked that this wasn't going as planned.

Regina took Emma's prolonged silence as an invitation to continue. "I'm Henry's mother, and I need your help to save your parents because you're the Savior."

Emma stared hard at Regina, confusion written all over her face.

"She's telling the truth, isn't she? You're not saying anything, which means she isn't lying. How is that possible?" Henry turned to Regina. "How can you be my mother? Did you use to be a man, are you the one who got my mom pregnant?"

"Henry!" Emma admonished. She eyed Regina. "Just because you believe what you're saying doesn't make it true. I need you to leave, my son needs to get ready for school."

"I'll go, I just…" Regina reached into her oversized bag, smiling at Henry. "I found your book."

Henry took it without saying anything, but he immediately opened it up next to his plate and began reading as he finished his pancake.

Emma followed Regina to the door. Regina went quietly, until Emma was about to close the door behind her.

"Please."

Emma closed the door and locked it, returning to the table.

"Mom, I don't have to go to school today. It's Saturday."

"Yeah, and I'm glad she didn't realize that. Let me see that." She leaned over Henry to see the oversized book, leafing quickly through the pages. What she found on the inside of the front cover, scrawled in her son's handwriting, gave her pause.

"Henry Mills"


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks to all the people who liked, favorited and reviewed Chapter 1. I hadn't planned to continue this but I suppose with OUaT on hiatus until March and my school obligations almost on hiatus until January I might as well. I don't really have much of an idea of where this might be going though, so if anyone has ideas they could PM me that would be awesome and they would be credited if I use them. **

* * *

Regina wasn't quite sure what to do now; she hadn't really planned on being in New York for longer than it took to find her son and Miss Swan. Her fingers brushed the bean in her pocket, but she didn't dare give up and return to FTL. She only had the one bean, so if she left without the people she came here to find she wouldn't be able to return for them. Besides, using the bean would break the stasis in which she had enveloped the land in order keep it from falling apart long enough for her to seek help.

Regina was stuck. As she huddled in the doorway of the apartment building, watching the foot traffic pass at a breakneck pace, Regina wondered what she would do now. Emma and Henry obviously needed time to come around, and the stasis afforded them that, but she didn't know what she was supposed to do in the meantime.

She dug in her handbag for a minute before pulling out a billfold she hadn't used in a very long time. She didn't know if any of her cards would actually work outside of Storybrooke, but she could test them by buying a much-needed meal and if that worked she could find a hotel room. She was loathe to walk much farther after trudging all the way to the Manhattan apartment from where she was unceremoniously dumped near the bank of the Hudson by the portal. She supposed she was glad, however, that the sand in which she landed was dry.

Regina could see the awning of a diner a block or two away, but her tired feet led her to the convenience store across the street. As the bell on the door jingled she noted how surreal it seemed to be walking into a generic c-store not too different from the one in Storybrooke, full of all the synthetic caloric luxuries of this world. Her year in FTL, devoid of electric lights and Cheetos, seemed like a very strange dream.

Regina grabbed a plastic basket near the door and began weaving through the aisles, grabbing whatever sounded good. She wondered if her growling stomach was audible to the cashier as she filled her basket with potato chips, Cheez-its, three different chocolate bars, an ice cream bar, a bottle of cherry coke, several different hostess snacks, a pack of pistachios, a very long Pixie Stick, and a rubbery hot dog covered in nacho cheese. She avoided the beef jerky, as it reminded her a bit too much of dried Chimera.

She was suddenly overcome with shame at her roaring hunger and lack of self-control as she put the overflowing basket on the counter. As the cashier rang up her purchases, totaling nearly 30 dollars, she felt the need to explain herself.

"I... I've been away. I just missed... all this stuff. Food. Not that I didn't have food, I just didn't have, you know, m&ms."

She mentally chided herself as the cashier just continued silently bagging her food. She knew this self-conscious demeanor was not how her mother raised her and was not befitting of a Queen, but she hadn't been a queen in a long time. It was also a lot easier to be confident when she had powerful magic at her fingertips.

As the cashier punched in the final DingDong Regina handed her the first of three cards she'd found in her wallet.

"Declined."

"Can you try this one?"

"Declined."

"What about this one? I've been away, I hope my accounts weren't closed out."

"Declined."

Shame burned on Regina's cheeks. "Could you try the first one again?"

"Declined."

"Do you take checks?"

"No. Listen, you obviously aren't good for it. I can let you have the hotdog because I'm supposed to throw them out and put out new ones in..." she checked her watch "five minutes anyway. But all the rest of this stuff has to go back."

Regina silently grabbed her hotdog and turned to leave, but was stopped by the clerk.

"Hey, I'm sorry. You want the rest of the roller grill stuff? They'll just go in the dumpster otherwise."

* * *

Regina leaned on the ledge of the roof of the building across from Emma's. After over a year of tramping around the forests of Neverland and Fairytale Land, climbing a fire escape wasn't too hard. She absentmindedly grabbed another stale snack from her paper bag of hot dogs, corn dogs, and taquitos as she watched the windows to the apartment, hoping Emma or Henry would come in view.

She wasn't sure where she would sleep that night. She didn't have the funds for a hotel room and going back to Emma so soon and asking to sleep on their couch was out of the question. Sleeping on the streets hardly seemed befitting of a Queen, but it seemed to be the only option.

Regina wished she would've had the foresight to bring a cot and a change of clothes. She had at least thought to dig up the suit she had been wearing when they were returned to her land, but it had quickly become sandy and dusty from her trek through New York and there was a glob of nacho cheese on her lapel. She would have a difficult time convincing Henry that she was the Queen in the book if she looked like a vagabond who had managed to find a set of last year's designer clothes. After a year in FTL Regina might kill, or at least maim, for a hot shower.

* * *

"Hey kid, you'll need to change out of your pajamas pretty soon if we're going to make it to the matinee. Have you decided between Maleficent and Frozen yet?"

"Can we go tomorrow? I want to read."

Emma sat down next to Henry on the couch. "Is that book really that interesting? You've been wanting to go to the movies all week."

"It's awesome. Check this out." Henry flipped back a couple pages. "It's Red Riding Hood eating her boyfriend."

"What is this book rated?" Emma snatched the book from Henry's lap.

"It's a book, not a video game. It's not like it has a sticker that says 'rated e for everyone' or something. And that's not what I meant by 'eating'." Henry grabbed the book back. "She's a werewolf. Little Red Riding Hood IS the Big Bad Wolf!"

Emma looked closer at the illustration on the next page, where red was back in human form. "She's also a fox," she commented with a wink.

"Moooom!" Henry whined. "Anyway," he continued "this book is great. If you see Regina again, tell her thanks."

"I don't know if I'll see her again, or if I want to. That was so strange, I... She knew so much about us, and she just kinda forced her way in here when I mentioned you... I feel like I should probably tell the doorman to keep her out but I almost want her to show up again just so I can try to figure out more about her, you know? I mean she seems weirdly familiar. Are you sure you don't know her?"

"Well," Henry said, flipping through the book, "she looks a lot like the Evil Queen."

"You mean with the heart-eating and the poison apple and the weird hood under her crown? I don't think so."

"No, in here. She looks a lot like Snow White's stepmother, but Regina had less hair and more clothes."

Henry angled the book towards Emma, opened to the page where the Evil Queen interrupts Snow White's wedding. "That is one severe ponytail," Emma remarked. "And why does she have lace in her hair?"

"For dramatic effect? I don't know, but doesn't she look like a more intimidating version of Regina?"

"Did you see her face when she saw you? She's too sappy to be evil, even if she is delusional."

"Oh, and there's something else. This one is really weird." Henry flipped to the pages where the curse was cast. "Remember that blanket you used to have until you lost it about a year ago?"

Emma didn't answer. She could see what Henry was showing her, and it made excitement and apprehension buzz through her head.

There in the book, wrapped around the infant held by Prince Charming, was the blanket to which Emma had clung for thirty years.

"I need to talk to Regina."

* * *

**I appreciate reviews, but it is a bit annoying to hear little besides "great story" or "please update". It boosts my ego but it doesn't help me improve my writing. I'd like to challenge you, if you will, to add constructive criticism. Say whatever you'd like to say, but please also mention something I could work on. I promise I won't take it personally no matter how bluntly you want to phrase it, and it may even slowly improve the quality of the fic. **


	3. Chapter 3

A huge thanks to everyone who gave constructive criticism. I've tried to take it all into consideration but if there's any lingering concerns feel free to continue to share them. Please do, actually. I promise you won't hurt my feelings. The comments I've had so far have been hugely helpful.

* * *

Emma groaned in utter frustration as she picked up her ringing phone. She wasn't sure what she had just been dreaming about, but it seemed very important for some reason. "Who is this? Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Miss Swan, thank goodness you picked up." Emma sat up and rubbed at her eyes. She couldn't quite place the voice yet, but it seemed very familiar. "I don't know if 'one phone call' covers a redial."

"Wha… is this Regina? How do you have my number?" Emma pulled her phone away from her ear to stare at it as if it would give her the answers she sought.

"How did I have your address? I have my ways." Emma squinted at the phone with suspicion. Her instincts told her to be wary of the woman who'd shown up at her apartment earlier knowing too much about her, but she was also intensely curious.

It took a moment for her groggy mind to remember that she should probably respond. "What do you want at… one-fifteen AM?"

"I'm, uh, in a bit of trouble. Though they said no charges would be filed as long as someone picked me up and gave their word that I'd, you know, not just go right back to where I was." Emma wasn't sure how, but she knew this stammering manner of speaking wasn't characteristic for Regina. It worried her, despite her misgivings.

"And where was that?" Emma frowned as she walked into the living room with shoes in hand to find Henry still playing video games even though he promised he'd go to bed by eleven. She gave him a reprimanding look and he slowly set the controller down with a grin that said that he knew exactly what he did wrong.

"I, well… the building across from your apartment," The voice on the other end of the line sounded abashed. "The fire escape, specifically."

The niggling feeling in Emma that Regina was pretty creepy grew a little. "And what were you arrested for?" Emma watched Henry's sheepish look turn into one of intense interest.

"Trespassing, vagrancy, loitering, something like that," replied Regina dismissively. "They haven't given me a straight answer." Emma could hear Regina's voice growing more serious, imploring. "Miss Swan, the officer is motioning for me to wrap it up. Are you going to help me or not?"

Emma's wariness battled her curiosity for a long moment before she released a long sigh.

"Fine, if only to get some answers." Emma held the phone between her shoulder and ear as she put her jeans back on over her pajama pants. "Hey kid, up for a late-night field trip?"

* * *

Regina sighed out of both relief and annoyance as Emma unlocked the bug. "You would be one to insist on driving your deteriorating crime spree souvenir in a city with such adequate public transport."

Emma paused to glare at Regina. "You wanna walk?"

Henry's eyes grew wide as he climbed into the car. "Mom, is the car stolen?"

Emma's cheeks grew pink and she avoided meeting Henry's inquisitive gaze in the rearview mirror. "That's irrelevant. And that was over a decade ago." Emma turned an accusatory glance towards the woman buckling into the passenger seat. "And how did you know about that?"

"You stole this car a decade ago?" Henry mused "I was born a decade plus two years ago... Was I made during a crime spree?"

Emma groaned. "Tell me we are not having this conversation right now, at two o'clock in the morning."

Regina relished her son's proximity and brilliant inquisitiveness as he eagerly leaned forward to stick his head in the front seat and pester Emma. "Were you on the crime spree with my dad? Ooh, what if you stole the bug with Regina and you two made me together and you just don't recognize her because she's transitioned since then and that's how she's my mom and knows so much about us?"

"Henry, I'm not _biologically_ your mother." Regina couldn't help but smile. Her boy was just as imaginative as ever, but this time he wasn't actually right.

"Besides, I would recognize your dad. Even in a skirt." Emma couldn't help but smile a little despite her best efforts. Still, she had to resist the urge to study the face of the woman next to her, considering she should probably be watching the road. She knew Regina wasn't Neal despite Henry's crackpot theories, but that did little to quell that tinge of familiarity Regina carried.

"You sure? Mr. Williams showed us a picture of himself when he was our age and had, you know, girl clothes and a ponytail and stuff. We could hardly tell it was him."

"Your science teacher, with the bowties and the Victorian-ish waxed moustache?" Emma was mildly surprised; she knew Henry's education in today's New York would be different from her own in 90s Maine but hadn't realised quite how progressive it would be. She too a moment to be glad that she's made the decision to put Henry in his more interesting public school instead of the prissy private school they'd considered. For some reason Henry had an irrational dislike for the navy blue sweater vests anyway.

"Yup." Henry started to say something else but was interrupted by a yawn.

Emma glanced away from the road to eye Regina. "You haven't explained why you were arrested for trying to climb the building across the street."

"I wasn't _trying_ to climb it, I _was_ climbing it. I only fell because the officer surprised me." Regina felt her anger welling again like it had when she had been surprised by the flashing lights. She had really wished she could've conjured a cloaking spell to escape, or at least a mattress to cushion her unceremonious fall. "Hijo de la puta," she mumbled heatedly "Si yo tenía mi poder, él sintiría mi fuego en su…"

"Hey, careful! I don't know what you're saying, but Henry's been taking Spanish so he might. Watch your language." In truth, she couldn't quite remember how Henry knew his rudimentary Spanish. His academic record hadn't shown any previous classes, but the placement test at his new school put him in Spanish 3. It seemed as if she might have memories of calling him "mijo," "Enrique," and "mi principito," but that didn't make sense given that she knew little Spanish beyond the profanities that some bail skippers shouted at her. It was just another of the fallacies that she'd noticed in the last year or so and tried not to think about.

"All I caught was something about a son of something." Henry piped up sleepily. "And something about fire."

Regina found small pleasure in the fact that even if her son didn't remember who she was he did remember that little piece of her that was the language she shared with her father. Emma's hard glance brought her back to her explanation. "Anyway, it took significant convincing before the police believed I wasn't trying to rob the place."

"So what _were_ you doing on the fire escape?"

"Waiting," Regina replied crypticly.

"_Waiting_? Come on, if you want to crash on our couch you're going to need to give a better explanation than that." Regina was sure that if Emma wasn't driving her hands would've been on her hips, he tone reminiscent of their first few weeks of butting heads in Storybrooke. She was amused to note that Emma too hadn't changed.

"I'll admit that I hadn't planned as well as I should've," Regina was quieter now, both out of a degree of shame and because Herny had fallen asleep in the back. "I was so focused on getting here that I didn't really think about what I would do once I found you. I wasn't so delusional to think that you'd believe me instantly, but I failed to anticipate food, housing, et cetera."

Emma parked the car but didn't get out immediately, instead turning to gaze at Regina intensely with a curious expression Regina couldn't quite read. "Were you going to sleep out there? In this city?"

Regina didn't meet Emma's gaze. "Well, yes. But I've grown re-accustomed to inclement sleeping conditions, so it wasn't…"

"What were you thinking?" Regina's instinct upon noting the harshness in Emma's voice was to go on the defensive, but she didn't fail to notice the degree of concern Emma exhibited. "It's dropping below freezing tonight, if you hadn't been arrested you might've ended up with frostbite, or hypothermia."

"Well what option did I have?" Regina crossed her arms and noticed with distaste that the elbows of her blazer were wearing thin. "Knock on your door and say 'Sorry for barging in earlier but can I sleep here, as I'm temporarily homeless?'"

"That's better than falling off a five-story building or freezing to death or…" Emma took a deep, calming breath. "Let's just take sleepyhead back there inside and then we can discuss… all this."

Regina turned around in her seat to smile at the young man dozing in the backseat.

* * *

Inside the apartment Henry stood with squared shoulders and crossed arms at the threshold of his room. "No I'm fine, I'm awake."

Emma ruffled Henry's hair with a smile. "You fell asleep in the car, and it's well past your bedtime anyway. Off to bed."

"I had a quick nap and now I'm fine. I wanna stay up and figure out what's going on, with you two!" Henry yawned widely, betraying his previous statement. "Really I'm fine," he covered. "I'll make us all some coffee."

Emma intercepted him as he stepped towards the kitchen. "No. Bed. Now. We'll catch you up in the morning."

As much as it amused Regina to watch this display of the stubbornness Henry has inherited from both mothers, she interrupted him as he groaned petulantly. "I could tuck you in, if you like?"

"He outgrew goodnight kisses when he was eleven. He's a manly man now," Emma teased.

"Actually, it would be cool if you'd read me a story from the book you brought me." Henry offered with a smile. He was sure he was much too old for a bedtime story, but he was down for any activity that would give him a chance to investigate both his interesting new book and the strange and strangely familiar woman who'd given it to him.

Regina's face lit up. "Yes!" She realized as soon as she said it that she should temper her enthusiasm. Emma and Henry still didn't remember who she was, after all. "I mean of course, which one?"

Emma was still a little wary of the stranger who seemed to know a little too much about them, but she figured Henry could handle a bedtime story. He had a can of mace in his nightstand, after all. "I'll start a pot of coffee."

As Emma went to the cupboard and pulled out a dry filter and the tin of grounds she ruminated over why Regina seemed so familiar. It was unsettling, really. For the last year or so she had been noticing little inconsistencies in her memory for the last ten years. She distinctly remembered that Henry's first "solid" food had been homemade applesauce, but she couldn't remember how or why she would've made applesauce instead of simply buying it. She seemed to remember a career as a bailbondsperson that had kept her out late and sent her all over the country, but she couldn't reconcile that with simultaneous memories of long evenings spent reading with Henry or teaching him to ride a bike or his school records that showed that he had been in the same school since kindergarten before coming to New York, even though for some reason those records didn't say where he'd been attending.

Emma realized she'd been heaping way too much coffee grounds into the coffee maker and began scooping some of them back out. Her mind began to wander again. If Regina was strange, Emma's reaction to her had been stranger. If it had been some random man to show up at her doorstop spouting nonsense she would've closed the door in his face, yet Emma had welcomed this stranger in a threadbare powersuit into her home to read to her son. Emma almost wanted to change her mind, tell Regina she had to go, but her curiosity and empathy won out. Even if it made her uneasy to have a beautiful stranger staying in her apartment, Emma could use the chance to study the woman who apparently believed everything she'd said about... family. Plus, she wouldn't starve or freeze in the process. Emma sensed that Regina could use a break.

Emma grabbed two mugs out of the cupboard, then remembered to turn the coffee maker on. She decided she would keep Regina around, if only because somehow she had managed to herd Henry to bed without much fuss. Besides, her Spanish skills might come in handy at work.


End file.
